Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/210

198 change is static. In dynamic phenomena the change is qualitative.

Once more, (p. 210):

The antithesis between the static and the dynamic requires to be still more incisively drawn than has yet been done. Both growth and multiplication belong to the department of statics. . . . So long as the type remains the same, the phenomena, whatever they may be, are static; there is permanence and stability. . . . The counter law that antagonizes heredity and works instability is called variation. . . . Efforts bring about a more perfect adaptation through modifications in the type. . . . This is development. . . . It is a dynamic process. Once more, (p. 218):

The test of a static phenomenon is that it shall relate to function. So long as these various institutions, no matter how diverse in different nations and ages, are considered as they actually are, or as they were at a given time, and not as in a process of transformation, the limits of socalsocial [sic] statics are not transgressed. . . . In sharp contradistinction to all this, the test of a dynamic phenomenon is that it shall relate to feeling, and shall have to do with the direct effects of action in the effort to satisfy want.

Unless I completely fail to understand this exposition, there is here a criterion quite distinct from that just proposed, viz., the tendency to change type. This seems more evident in comparison with the following (p. 215):

A dynamic action is one that affects not merely the primary agent at the particular time, but all other agents for all time. Such actions